I've been reading a wonderfully researched and entertaining book on Los Angeles history, written during the 1940s called "Southern California, An Island On the Land". I have a tendency to make exclamatory noises while reading this book like, "Huh!", "No way", "Wow". I do this whether anyone else is around or not, but if Steve is around, he'll often ask (and just as often not) for me to tell him what's so interesting.

That's probably an overstatement. I pretty muchly force my little factoids and quotes on his helplessly open ears. But, he obviously appreciates it some of the time, as he asked me to share some of these quotes with you all. They will be interesting to anyone who has lived in Tamarindo, and especially so to those of you who have been here for several years and watched a bit of its evolution. I think it's endlessly entertaining to compare the two developing places, then and now.

From "Southern California, An Island On the Land" by Carey McWilliams, copyright 1946:

"As a result of the boom-cycle phenomenon, the old and the new exist in curious juxtaposition throughout Southern California. Communities that have grown as rapidly as Los Angeles develop what Richard Neutra has called "an obsolescence praecox." Each wave of migration has brought modes of living and patterns of design that have been superimposed upon, or placed side by side with, the monuments of earlier migrations. There has been neither time nor inclination to remove the old."

And also quoted in McWilliams' book, a quote from "A Place in the Sun" by Frank Fenton:
"Los Angeles was not like some Middle-Western city that sinks its roots into some strategic area of earth and goes to work there. This was a lovely makeshift city. Even the trees and plants did not belong here. They came, like the people, from far places, some familiar, some exotic, all wanderers of one sort or another seeking peace or fortune or the last frontier, or a thousand dreams of escape."

Photo Credits:
Top Photo: Aerial view of California hills near Los Angeles, 1940, by David E. Scherman for Life Magazine
Bottom Photo: Arial view of El Toro, California, 1940, Taken from www.airfields-freeman.com

# posted by jocelynbroyles original designs and jewelry @ 4/23/2009 01:01:00 PM